Hear Trent Reznor’s Aggressive ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops II’ Theme

The first-person shooter video game comes out Tuesday, the same day as Reznor's How to Destroy Angels EP

Trent Reznor’s theme for Call of Duty: Black Ops II has surfaced (via Antiquiet), and it’s a seething, foreboding instrumental with an unshakable rock backbone. The full five-minute track doesn’t veer too wildly from a preview that hit the Internet back in July, its mix of ominous keyboards, pounding rhythms, and crunching distortion finding a neat middle ground between his recent soundtrack work and his full-band Nine Inch Nails guise — which already could often be plenty cinematic. As he described it then, the theme is an “aggressively sounding” work with proper guitar, bass, and drums.

The video game is out tomorrow, which just happens to be the release date for another Reznor project. How to Destroy Angels, Reznor’s band with his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, along with Nine Inch Nails collaborators Atticus Ross and Rob Sheridan, officially puts out its An Omen EP tomorrow (stream the whole thing here). Meanwhile, Reznor continues stringing us along with vague promises of new NIN music. He has said that video games are “a true art form” that’s “every bit as viable as film work or music,” and while it’s tough to disagree with him, somehow that doesn’t make the idea of a new album or tour any less tempting.